


a Jedi craves not these things

by tielan



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5939989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan





	a Jedi craves not these things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm8/gifts).



As she looks into Luke Skywalker’s eyes, holds out the lightsaber to him, Rey finally understands why General Organa sent her on this mission.

_We recognise each other, in ways I can’t explain. It doesn’t...It’s not always comfortable. You’ll understand, I think, when you see Luke._

“No.” The word is husked into the tugging wind, slipped from his lips as soon as it’s uttered. But Rey hears it, through more than her ears. “No. It’s yours. You’ve earned it.”

“By right of birth?” Her voice sounds shrill to her own ears; too many weeks of Chewie’s sonorous tones, Artoo’s expressive whistles as they hop-skip-jumped across the galaxy.

“If it was by right of birth, you wouldn’t have earned it.” A shadow passed over him, almost like a convulsion, and Rey had an impression of a woman smiling, the lines and curves of her face achingly familiar—

The impression vanishes in the blink of Skywalker’s eyelid. Rey catches her breath, and her fingers clench around the handle of the lightsaber, wanting to call back the memory, wanting to _remember—_

Skywalker makes a noise like a sigh. “Strong in the Force. Stronger than—”

“You trained him.” All the long trip here, she’s felt the weight of something looming over her, like the heavy frame of an Imperial Star Destroyer as she scavanged through its depths. “I saw it—”

He holds up one hand – gloved, but she can feel the...oddness in it. “Not something to talk about now. Put that away,” he gestures at the lightsaber. “And we’ll go down and see Chewie and Artoo.”

* * *

The Force is strong in her family.

She _has_ a family, and leaving her on Jakku—

“Your mother said she knew of somewhere safe; of people who’d keep you safe.” Skywalker says, and his eyes search her face, as though looking for the traces of himself in her. “You survived, so she was right in that.”

“What happened to her?”

His gaze shutters. “I don’t know. She blocked me out – she was strong enough to do that. I only felt her die.”

Rey looks down at the plate of her dinner, made uncomfortable by the overtones of grief. It was different with General Organa; there was a sense of welcome, there – pleasure and relief to see Rey, overlaid with grief for her husband, grief for her son.

But here? Where she’s nothing more than a symbol of everything Luke Skywalker has lost?

“No.” His voice breaks into her thoughts, and his eyes are on hers – the same shape, if not the same colour. “Never think that.”

“I’m not—I grew up without family.” She clung to the hope of their return for years; resigned herself to the drudgery of scavenging. “I don’t know how...” The things that she saw among the Resistance – friendships, belonging, _family_ – she has no experience of them. They make her deeply uncomfortable in ways she can’t describe.

_...a Jedi craves not these things..._

“I don’t want a father,” she says, and knows it to be true. “But I need someone to teach me the ways of the Jedi.”

Skywalker looks her in the eye. “That, I can do.”


End file.
